Predictors of intentions to eat healthily in 8-9-year-old children.

One thousand two hundred seventy-two French children aged 8-9 years old participated in a study aimed at identifying predictors of healthy eating intention. We used a survey based on the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). Regression analyses were performed to assess the extent to which the extended TPB variables explained intention to eat healthily. The results indicated that attitude, parental norms, friend's norms, knowledge, motivation to conform to friends' and parental norms and perceived behavioral control accounted for 35% of the variance of intention to eat healthily. The most important predictor in this study was perceived as behavioral control.

Does knowledge about sexuality prevent adolescents from developing rape-supportive beliefs?

Believing that rape is acceptable in some situations may account for adolescent boys' perpetration of forced sex on girls. This study was intended to examine two hypothesized cognitive factors of adolescents' rape-supportive beliefs: general knowledge, measured with grade point average (GPA); and specific knowledge about sexuality, measured with a newly devised questionnaire. Fourteen-year-old adolescents (N = 248) participated in a short-term longitudinal study. They completed questionnaires designed to assess sexual knowledge and rape-supportive beliefs, and six months later completed them again. Sexual knowledge increased sharply between Time 1 and Time 2, whereas rape-supportive beliefs decreased during the same time. Boys obtained higher rape-supportive belief scores than girls. Regression analyses showed that sexual knowledge significantly predicted the level of rape-supportive beliefs six months later, independent of GPA and sex of participants. GPA accounted for a greater part of the variance in rape-supportive beliefs. This article discusses the importance of paying attention to the level of academic achievement of adolescents, as well as to their sexuality-specific knowledge, as a way of improving the efficiency of programs specializing in the prevention of adolescent sexual violence.

Measuring willingness to try new foods: a self-report questionnaire for French-speaking children.

The study was designed to develop and validate a self-report questionnaire on food neophobia in French children. We evaluated food neophobia in a specific cultural context, examining an age group that has hardly been studied (5- to 8-year-olds). The questionnaire items were based on methods known for changing neophobic behavior (imitation, information, flavor principle and external stimulation) in order to diversify food presentation situations. In addition, we used colored pictures of food for seven items. Thirteen items that referred to acceptance of unfamiliar food were selected out of 25 items tested in an earlier stage. Six hundred and three children filled out the food neophobia questionnaire and a food task used to check its predictive validity was given to 503 of them. A factor analysis emphasized the one-dimensional structure of the questionnaire. Results showed satisfactory internal consistency and good test-retest reliability. The children's choices and their willingness to try new types of food were significantly correlated with the questionnaire scores. Food neophobia conceived as a personality trait was discussed.

Preadolescents' recognition of faces of unfamiliar peers: the effect of attractiveness of faces.

The authors examined preadolescents' ability to recognize faces of unfamiliar peers according to their attractiveness. They hypothesized that highly attractive faces would be less accurately recognized than moderately attractive faces because the former are more typical. In Experiment 1, 106 participants (M age = 10 years) were asked to recognize faces of unknown peers who varied in gender and attractiveness (high- vs. medium-attractiveness). Results showed that attractiveness enhanced the accuracy of recognition for boys' faces and impaired recognition of girls' faces. The same interaction was found in Experiment 2, in which 92 participants (M age = 12 years) were tested for their recognition of another set of faces of unfamiliar peers. The authors conducted Experiment 3 to examine whether the reason for that interaction is that high- and medium-attractive girls' faces differ more in typicality than do boys' faces. The effect size of attractiveness on typicality was similar for boys' and girls' faces. The overall results are discussed with reference to the development of face encoding and biological gender differences with respect to the typicality of faces during preadolescence.